A typical well balanced budget.

A few nights ago I helped a friend set up a budget. She’d been in school for awhile and had just scored her first job in a new city. She needed a budget in order to determine what she could afford in rent. It was a lot of fun helping her figure out what she could afford based on her starting salary, and we arrived at a number that we were both happy with.

It was really eye opening realizing how different spending patterns and habits affect the overall shape of a budget. I know there are guidelines to the typical well balanced budget like the one on the right, but there are so many different kinds of budgets, that I don’t think very many budgets actually follow the typical guidelines.

Your Budget Must Have an Objective

The shape of a budget really depends on the objective of the budget, or what kind of goal you’re trying to accomplish with the budget. My budget, for example, only faintly resembles the pie chart above. My debt slice is over 50%, and my housing slice is 5%. Even though I definitely don’t have a balanced budget in a typical sense, I’d argue that my budget is super healthy, because it’s helping me achieve my current objective, which is to wipe out my debt as quickly as possible.

My budget, which is kind of wacky to begin with, is nothing like my friend’s budget, which also doesn’t really follow the guidelines above. Her budget is heavier in certain categories because this is a transitional period in her life, but in my opinion it’s totally balanced and will help her achieve her goal of settling into a new city.

Objectives Change Over Time

I’ll probably be debt free by the end of the year. After that epic, life changing moment has passed, I’m going to have around $1300 per month in freed up cash flow, plus tax returns and freelance income. I’ve been thinking more and more about what I’m going to do with that cash. I know for sure that I’m going to do some seriously well deserved spending for a month or two after debt freedom, but after that, I’ll probably start to funnel most of it into my fancy new budget, with a fancy new objective.

The Savings Budget

A large portion of the money I am sending to debt repayment will probably end up in various savings accounts. I’ll save for retirement, I’ll save for my emergency fund, and I’ll start to save a small amount for a house downpayment. The objective of my budget is going to change, and so will the contents of my budget, to suit my new objectives.

I’m actually super excited to see what my new, more flexible budget is going to look like. I want a significant focus of this budget to be on enjoying life more. That means a little bit of lifestyle inflation, especially in the travel section. I also am excited to sleep better knowing I have a large financial cushion in case of emergencies, and that my money is growing over time instead of diminishing due to interest charges.

Budgets change over time, and depending on what you’re trying to accomplish in life, they hardly ever look “normal”.

What’s the objective of your budget?

This photo was taken about 5km from my house.

The photo on the right was taken last week, of a forest fire about 5km from my house. It was a pretty big fire and raged out of control for over a day. It destroyed three homes and sent one fire fighter to the hospital. I first heard about this fire when I was at work, because it started very close to my coworker’s property. It was visible from the parking lot, a big column of smoke wafting upwards, with little water bomber planes buzzing in and out of view like flies.

I wasn’t very concerned about the fire. The wind was blowing it away from us, into the woods, and there’d been a much more threatening one last year, so this one, while huge and scary, was not as frightening as it could have been.

Still, it made me run through my mental check list of the things I would toss into the car if the wind suddenly shifted and we were asked to evacuate.

Are You Prepared for the Worst?

Fortunately for me, moving from apartment to apartment means that I’ve managed to stay pretty organized when it comes to the important stuff. All important documents including financials, passport, birth certificates and the dog’s adoption papers are in a single file folder. The cat’s crate is in my closet, her harness, leash, and vaccination records are in the small attached pocket. Our photos are stored on Flickr. I’d grab pet food, the litter box, the pets, along with our computer, camera, my tablet and cell phone charger, and change of clothing and my make up bag that contains all of my medications and essentials. All in all I think I could high tail it out of there in under ten minutes, which is great, because with a fire evacuation, that’s usually all you have.

Having this little scare really got me thinking about being prepared, should the worst happen. I think everyone can agree that having a fire consume your home ranks among one of the worst things that could happen, but in truth there’s a whole range of bad things that could happen, and being prepared for them is so important.

I’ve been getting along for the past 17 months on a $2,000 emergency fund. I think, once I get out of debt, I’m going to make beefing this up a priority. I want to have more of a savings cushion to fall back on, especially because my fiancé is a seasonal entrepreneur and even though he’s always met his financial obligations, it would be nice to know that if he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be an issue.

I’m also going to start saving for retirement. I haven’t done this yet because I’ve chosen to dedicate all of my funds to debt repayment. I’m at the point where I want to start thinking long term, and part of that is to save for when I no longer want to work.

That forest fire really got me thinking about being prepared for both the unexpected (fires) and the inevitable (retirement). Are you prepared?

Millionaire Teacher Give Away

Speaking of being prepared, want to know more about index investing for retirement? I wrote a review on the book Millionaire Teacher awhile ago, and I was fortunate enough to receive two copies to give away!

Entering is simple, just follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter widget below. This contest is open to anyone living in North America and will end in two weeks!
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Otherwise known as: Do your research and receive free money people!

I’ve written about this topic before. Back when I first got my student loan notice, I didn’t owe the original $26,720 that I frequently mention here on the blog. I used student loans to finance my education and living expenses, and actually left school with a whooping $42,000 in student loans. Fortunately, some internet sleuthing revealed and very poorly publicized incentive to New Brunswick graduates. Since I was such a good student and graduated on time, the NB government forgave $16,000 of that debt, bringing my total owing down to a much more manageable $26,000 (plus interest). You can read the whole story here.

What I blogged about back in July of 2012 is still true today. Government incentives are a great resource for people looking to unburden themselves from student loans a little faster. Due to this, I’ve kept my eyeballs peeled (what a gross expression) for additional incentives that would help me pay off my student loan debt even faster. That’s when I came across an incentive offered by the New Brunswick government for student loan holders (A reader just informed me: This rebate is for anyone who paid tuition, not just people with student loans) working in this province and paying income tax. Again, it was terribly publicized, but once I found it, all of the relevant information was there. Basically it’s a rebate on my income tax payable up to $4,000, every year for 20 years or until I’ve claimed $20,000.

I couldn’t claim it last year because I had no income tax payable. This year, however, even though I got a monster tax return, I still ended up paying $1,929.25 in income tax to the NB government, and they were kind enough to approve my application and give it back to me. The hoops I had to jump through were a bit annoying (sealed copy of transcript, a long application, tax forms, etc) but the result is totally worth it!

What a lovely sight first thing in the morning!

I’ll give you one guess as to what I did with that rebate when it hit my account yesterday.

The Student Loan Slaughter Continues

In the past I’ve split my windfall money between spending, saving, and debt repayment. I didn’t do that this time. Instead, I made a $1,929.25 payment to my student loans, bringing my balance owing down to a ridiculously low $1,092.00. Boom.

I don’t even know what to say to that. Wait, I do.

I’ll say that I’m now in the four digit range for total debt owing. ($8,768), and that I’ve paid off $11,600 in debt since January 1st.

I’ll say that I’m still planning another $600 in payments this month, not including freelance income.

I’ll say that I’ll definitely have this paid off before my wedding, maybe this month depending on freelance income (wanna hire me?).

I’ll say that I need to get in touch with the company my car is financed through because I’m gonna be making some extra payments on that baby soon!

Seriously, just speechless. I’ve been working towards getting this gone for so. freaking. long. I can’t believe it’s so close.

I’ve been making some good progress on my debt repayment plan, so I thought today would be a good day to write a post solely dedicated to my debt. My previous debt by numbers posts can be found here and here.

Paying off debt is tough. It’s boring, requires a lot of sacrifice, and is generally not the most fun past time. I’ve now been in debt repayment mode for one year and five months, and I’ve definitely gone through a bout or two of frugal fatigue, but through it all I’ve continued to dutifully make my payments, and because of this, I’m now looking at some pretty amazing progress over the last 17 months.

How Far I’ve Come

As of writing, I’ve paid of 71% of my total debt, $9,500 of which has been since the beginning of 2013. I started out in November 2012 with just under $38,000 owing, and today I’ve paid off $27,063. I’ve made such amazing progress over the past four months, I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I’m very close to owing in the four digit range for my total debt. I really feel like I’m into the home stretch with this whole debt repayment thing, after months of putting everything I have towards debt, and a few months of being really, really sick of my strategy. I recently went through a bout of frugal fatigue, and after some retail therapy, I’m back on the wagon and ready to knock out this remaining 10k with enthusiasm.

Total Debt

The Student Loan War Path

Most of my efforts in debt repayment have been towards my student loans. This is simply because:

• The principle is biggest
• The interest rate is highest
• It’s variable, so I’d like to get it paid off before interest rates rise

While I’ve still be making the minimum required payments on my car loan, I’ve been throwing all extra cash at my student loans. This includes birthday money, income tax returns, car insurance settlements, raises, freelance income, and every last dollar that I can squeeze out of my budget. The result is that, more often than not, I pay over half of my net income towards my student loans every month, and the results are finally starting to show.

Student Loan Debt

As you can see, I have a very reasonable balance left owing on my student loans. That said, seeing that small balance doesn’t make me want to relax, in fact, it does the opposite! Seeing that small balance makes me want to push on and continue to pay off as much as I can until those loans are gone.

The Next Few Months

The next months are going to be crucial to my debt free date. I’m hoping to receive some windfall money this month that should dramatically reduce what’s left owing on my student loans. I’m hoping that falls into place, but I never like to count my chickens before they hatch, in case something goes wrong. Beyond that, I’m getting married in June, and I’m hoping I won’t have to spend all of the cash that I’ve saved up. Any cash left over I’m planning on putting towards debt (honeymoon is already paid for), whether it’s my student loan or car loan.

I’m hoping to be able to be debt free by the end of 2013, but that’s still only a dream. If everything goes according to plan, it could happen, but in my experience, life doesn’t tend to follow the script you’d like it to. For now, I’m just happy that I’ve been able to make as much progress as I have, and I hope that my good luck holds out long enough for me to pay off all of my debt AND build a bigger emergency fund.

How’re you doing with your debt repayment? I want to know!

My fiancé and my dog Molly at a lookout point at Fundy Park.

Happy Monday!

This weekend was gorgeous and sunny out. I spent a ton of time outside soaking up a ton of vitamin D. My fiancé and I had our first bonfire of the season on Saturday afternoon and then went to Fundy National Park on Sunday for a 4.4km hike. After such an active weekend, we both felt pretty exhausted and by around 4pm on Sunday afternoon we were both curled up on the couch napping and watching movies on Netflix.

Having a good TV and access to entertainment at home has been a huge help with my debt payoff budget. By being able to entertain myself at home, I’m not tempted to go out to dinner, to go shopping, or to bars. I know that I can have just as good of a time at home playing video games or watching Netflix, and that has helped me save so much cash to put towards my debt instead.

HDTV Give Away

So if you don’t have a great TV to help you stay at home, here’s your chance to enter to win one! I’ve gotten together with a few other bloggers to give away a Samsung 50″ LED HDTV! Anyone in the world can enter, but only up to $50 of the shipping charges will be covered. The contest runs from May 1st, to 31st, so there’s lots of time to get your entries in. To enter simply follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below, and good luck!

This give away was made possible by QuoteMeAPrice.com where you can get cash for annuities.

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Spring has sprung!

How is it almost May 1st already? April really seemed to fly by and I’m happy to say it seems like Spring is officially upon us here in the east coast. That means lots of long walks with the dog, and more wedding planning! I’m keeping up well with my goals this month, despite having only an average income.

April Money Sucks

April was an expensive month in my household. Here are a few things that sucked my disposable cash away this month:

• Wedding Expenses – We bought our wedding rings this month, paid to rent our tables and chairs, bought another wine kit, and paid for my fiance’s suit as well as deposits on the rest of them. All in all we dropped $513 on the wedding this month.
• Home Furnishings – This month was an expensive month for home furnishings. I’ve been saving for awhile and this month I purchase two bedside tables, a lamp, and curtains for the bedroom (all paid in cash). I also bought a bistro patio set (which I charged, see the post about it here). The total damage was a whooping $417 but I don’t regret any of it!
• Groceries – You know all of that stuff you only have to purchase a few times a year? Like certain cleaning products, or a new mop? April was the month of replacing-all-the-stuff-I’ve-been-putting-off-buying. We went a $165 over budget on groceries this month.
• Entertainment – My fiance’s business really picked up this month, and as a result he hasn’t been home as much to help with meal preparation. As a result, we ate out a lot more than we normally would. We went over budget for entertainment by $60.

Clearly, lots of money flowing out of my accounts this month. Luckily almost all of it was paid for with cash.

Total Debt ($-11,474.00) (-8%)

This month was kind of a ho-hum month for debt repayment. Nothing exciting to report, I made my regular payments at the regular time, here’s the breakdown. I made my weekly regular extra student loan payments of $100 each for a total of $400. I also paid $167.77 from my freelance income (I’m keeping part of it for spending money now, read why here.) and then my regular $301.46 monthly minimum payment. That’s a total of $869.00 towards my student loans. Add in my minimum monthly car payment of $206.50 and I’ve paid a total of $1,075.73 towards my debt this month!

That means that for the last nine consecutive months, I’d paid over $1,000 a month towards my debt! At the moment, I owe around $3,600 on my student loans, and $7,800 on my car. I hope to pay off a large chunk of my student loans this month, using some windfall money I’m hoping to acquire, but I won’t go into detail about that until I know more. If everything goes according to plan, I should have my student loans paid off in just a few short months!

Net Worth ($+1,760.00) (+155%)

I’m officially pulling away from a negative net worth, hopefully I’ll never have to see it again. Great improvements in net worth this month mostly due to how much debt I’ve paid off, and a little more wedding money hitting our accounts. I don’t expect that to last though since that money will be streaming right back out of our accounts soon enough. I’ll rely on my awesome debt reduction to keep bolstering my net worth from now on.

Last Month’s Mini Goals

Focus On the Wedding

We definitely got a lot done with regards to the wedding this month. I ordered our wedding rings, dropped my dress off to be altered, booked chairs for the reception, paid for the suits, dealt a little more with the wedding music and lined up a few more volunteers for food preparation. So far it’s going well! I definitely feel like we have a handle on things at the moment and although there’s tons left to do, I’ve stopped having nightmares about nothing being ready for the wedding, so I must be doing something right!

This Month’s Mini Goals

Start Running Again

Ever since I decided to quit my marathon training, I haven’t been doing much running. Mostly this is because of the injury that forced me to quit in the first place, but also because I was feeling discouraged and wanted to just ignore that part of my life for awhile. Lately I’ve gotten back into walking with my dog Molly several times a week, and I’d like to start incorporating a slow jog into that workout. I miss running and I want to get back into it, but in a safe and healthy way that doesn’t cause my old injury to flare up.

That’s my April, how was yours? I want to know!

The weather is finally starting to warm up.

On Sunday, I did something that I haven’t done since before Christmas: I charged something to my credit card, without having the cash to pay for it.

Here’s the story: It’s been really gorgeous out lately. The grass has been growing, the tulips are finally sprouting, and it’s actually warm enough to lounge around outside without a sweater and mittens on. The only problem is that I don’t have any outdoor furniture to sit on. Last year, I sat on the deck, which  is definitely not comfortable for lounging, but it served it’s purpose because I was in hard core debt repayment mode and buying patio furniture was out of the question.

This year, I’m still in hard core debt repayment mode, so I once again didn’t budget any money for patio furniture. But on Sunday, it was nice out, and I wanted a place to sit and read my book, to have my coffee, and to eat outside this summer. So when my fiancé and I went into town to buy groceries, and I walked by a cute bistro table and chair set, I thought, what the hell. I bought it, and charged it to my credit card.

Unplanned Purchases Can Be Dangerous

Some personal finance bloggers would have you believe that spontaneous purchases have no place in your budget. For the most part, they’d be right. For a lot of people, spontaneous credit card swiping is what gets them into debt in the first place. A dinner here, a nice top there, a new couch because you moved into a new apartment and hey – you deserve it! It’s true, spontaneous purchases can lead you down a bad road, if you’re the sort of person that treats their credit card like an ATM machine (and many of us do!). That said, I’m lucky enough to have never really had that problem, and I’m a firm believer that the occasional unplanned purchase keep life interesting – especially if you conduct yourself responsibly the majority of the time.

Being Responsible so Unplanned Purchases Are No Big Deal

Take the purchase I just made, as an example. I’m in hard core debt repayment mode, and because of this, I didn’t have cash laying around to pay for the unplanned purchase of a patio set. Most of the time, if I want to buy something, I’ll spend several weeks or months saving the money out of my personal allowance and pay for it in cash. In fact, I’d finished doing just that. I’ve spent the last five weeks saving up enough cash from my piddly personal allowance to buy a set of bedside tables, and had just depleted the small wad of cash I’d managed to accumulate in order to do so. I generally don’t keep a large cash reserve in my chequeing account, because I think that money would be better served paying off my student loans.

While it sucks that I didn’t have enough money to just make this purchase outright, the upside of being responsible with my finances is that I have no credit card debt, so paying off this relatively small purchase, is not going to sting all that much. Instead of waiting weeks to save up the cash, I’ll be able to pay it off before interest starts to accrue, and in the mean time I’ll be able to enjoy reading, eating and relaxing in the beautiful outdoors. Every once in awhile, being making spontaneous purchases really is worth it.

Do you plan every single purchase, or do you occasionally (or often) swipe your credit card for instant gratification? I want to know!

Blogging hasn’t been high on my priority list lately.

Ok, so I’ve been a bad blogger this April. I think I got burned out. I just haven’t been able to sit my butt in a chair and consistently crank out posts like I used to. For this I’m sorry, I’ve still been around, reading your posts, I just haven’t been contributing any of my own.

I think there are a lot of reasons why I haven’t been drawn to writing this month. One reason is that I quit my half marathon training. I wrote a few times about how it wasn’t going so well, and eventually an old injury brought my training to a halt. Boo. I felt like a bit of a failure, and so have been avoiding the blog. I realize that’s not a real solution, but it’s something I needed to do for awhile.

Another reason is that my involvement in my community has taken a definite uptick lately. Around Christmas my fiancé and I joined a community group and we’ve only just had to start giving more than two Tuesdays a month recently. One of the things the group is participating in is the local Relay For Life.

In case you don’t know what the relay for life is, you can read about it here. You can also learn about some of the great programs the proceeds of the fundraiser go to, here. I’ve never participated in the Relay before, but I’m really excited to do so!

One of the things we are doing for the Relay is fundraising. That is, I’m collecting donations from my friends and family. I’ve set a goal for myself of collecting $100 for the Relay, and I would absolutely love anyone and everyone to make a donation. It doesn’t have to be a lot. It could be as simple as giving up something as small as a $10 lunch or a $15 bottle of wine. Any donations will make a huge difference to me, to the relay, and to everyone the proceeds of the fundraising will help. To help me complete my goal of fundraising $100 for the Relay for Life, click on the button below. It’ll take you to my participant page, where on the right hand side, you can donate as little as $10 ( for the tax receipt) or even less!

  Donate To Relay for Life

I’ll be updating my progress with a widget in my side bar. The Relay doesn’t start until June 7th, so I’m really hoping I can meet my goal by then! So, if you can find it in your budget to donate a couple of bucks to my cause, I would be oh so grateful!

Now, on to the link love.

Blog Posts I Loved

Cait from Blonde on a Budget tells us that she is, in fact, not closing her blog after her debt is gone. Woot!

Jessica from Mo’ Money Mo’ Houses takes about her experience at Catholic Premarital Counselling (parts 1 and 2!)

Catherine from Plunged in Debt reminds us that even if we’re in debt, we still need to live life! (And buy underwear)

Michelle and Jeff from See Debt Run bought a house!

Daisy from When Life Gives You Lemons also talks about how extreme deprivation usually has the opposite effect you want it to.

Have a great weekend guys!

Most of my guests have replied!

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated everyone on my wedding plans. Decorations are being bought, rings have been ordered, and as you can see above, RSVP’s are rolling in.  When it comes to planning my wedding, I’ve been trying to find ways to cut costs. I’m still in a fairly deep bog of debt, and I don’t want to add to that by having a bigger wedding than I can afford.

So, naturally, when the question of invitations came up, I began to look for ways to save money on invitations without sacrificing the look and feel of real paper invitations. I knew I didn’t want to spend a lot, and I DEFINITELY new that I didn’t want to spend anywhere near what the average couple spent on wedding invitations in 2012. A whooping

$659

Are. You. KIDDING ME?

That’s more than I spend on clothing in a year!

I’m not sure who those people are, but I’m not one of them.

Online Wedding Invitations

I really liked the idea of online wedding invitations. They were initially appealing to me because of the environmental aspect. I wasn’t really crazy about the idea of using a ton of paper and ink to send invitations to people who, honestly, are probably just going to throw them away.

Sure, I wanted a few keepsake ones, for the people who would cherish them, but for everyone else? Electronic would do just fine.

After I started researching what was available in terms of extra services that came with online invitations, I became more convinced that online invitations were the way to go. Here are some of the services that came with a few of the sites I checked out:

• A wedding website
• Customized invitation
• Weekly RSVP email digests
• Automatic reminder emails to guests
• Easy delivery of announcements to guests
• A wide variety of invitation styles to chose from
• Ability to mail out invitations to the less computer savvy family members

This last one was what really sold me on the online invitation idea. I knew I wanted to send out online invitations to the majority of our guests, but I wanted a physical invitation for myself, close family members, and those without email.

Are Online Wedding Invitations Worth It?

After researching the available options, I ended up going with Pingg.com, for my online wedding invitations. The website was easy to use, there was a great variety of invitations, and the cost was very reasonable. We were able invite most people via email, and the wedding website allows us to have an open dialogue with our guests, should we need to tell them about any changes to the program, or make any announcements.

For those without email, physical invitations were a snap, and extremely simple to send out. The whole process was quick and relatively painless. We were able to pick a beautiful design and customize it to suit our needs. Once we hit send, the real fun began. As someone who is very into social media, the real time statistics that were available with the online wedding invitations was amazing. We were able to track successfully sent emails, as well as email opens and website views in real time. The first night that my fiance and I sent the invitations out, we sat in front of the computer and watched the RSVP’s roll in. It was great!

Online Wedding Invitations are Perfect for the Budget Conscious

Perhaps the best part about using Pingg.com for our online wedding invitations was the cost. While the average couple in 2012 spend $659 on wedding invitations (still can’t believe that number), my fiance and I spent about 10% of that. It was a great way to save money on an aspect of our wedding that neither of us really felt strongly about, so that we could funnel our limited budget towards other, more important aspects.

What ways did you save money on your wedding? I want to know!

University was expensive!

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have my financial awakening until after I was done University. I went through school, borrowing as much as I possibly could, because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. I was living in an expensive city, going to an expensive school, I didn’t think I had much choice – especially whenever I checked my bank balance and saw a very small sum staring back at me

University was a great time of my life. I had a lot of fun. I worked hard during my semesters off at above minimum wage jobs, and I managed to save a fair portion of that money. Still, I didn’t give much thought to what would happen after school, or how I would pay all of that money back. I didn’t even know my interest rate! I made a lot of money mistakes in school that I really regret, here are a few of them:

Not Having a Part Time Job

Although I worked full time during every semester off, and over Christmas, I didn’t have a part time job while in school. I couldn’t imagine working while also going to school full time, I was super busy without adding a part time job to the mix! I also felt that the payoff wasn’t enough to justify the hours. Now that I’m paying off my student loans, I realize that even a part time job working 10 hours per week would’ve made a significant dent in how much I owed at the end of school.

Not Applying for More Scholarships and Bursaries

I made the mistake of thinking that the only people that got scholarships were people with amazing grades or exceptional personal circumstances. I now realize that’s not true, and that there were tons of options out there if I’d just taken the time to apply!

Not Knowing the Facts About My Loan

As I mentioned above, I had no idea what I was getting into when I applied for student loans. I knew I needed them in order to go to school, and that basically everyone I knew in high school was also applying for them. That’s pretty much all I knew until I graduated. I didn’t know what the interest rate on my loans was, I didn’t know what the repayment terms were, and I had no clue what kind of payments I was looking at until I’d already graduated.

Looking back, this is absolutely ridiculous. Even though my loan information wasn’t readily provided to me, I should’ve gone looking for it, not just blindly trusted that I would be able to afford all of the debt I was taking on.

Not Budgeting

While I didn’t rack up any credit card debt or spend beyond my means, I definitely spent everything I had. Most of that was because I went to school in such an expensive city, but I definitely didn’t scrimp and save and deny myself things like I do now. It resulted in a lot of fun nights, but it also meant a big student loan bill at the end of those four years.

Going to University these days is expensive. I ended up with around $40k in student loans because of my education, and my story isn’t uncommon. I can’t help but thinking that if I hadn’t made a few of these money mistakes, I wouldn’t have left school with so much owing. Fortunately I got a second bite at the apple and was able to get my loans reduced down to $26,720, so my mistakes didn’t stick with me for long.

So, if anyone reading this is in school, or about to go to school, heed my words! Don’t make the same mistakes I did! There are tons of ways to minimize student loans while you’re in school, and a few things you can do after the fact.

What were your big money mistakes in school? I want to know!